Your Digital Legacy in Ontario: What Happens to Online Accounts After Death

Email, photos, banking apps, and social media now hold as much of a person’s life as a filing cabinet ever did. When someone dies in Ontario, that online footprint does not close itself. Some of it is sentimental. Some of it has real money attached. Almost all of it is locked behind passwords, two-factor codes, and company rules written in California or Ireland.

If you are writing a will, or you have just been named estate trustee, this is the practical map.

This article is general information for Ontario families, not legal advice. Platform rules change. For a valuable estate or a locked crypto wallet, speak with an Ontario estates lawyer.

What counts as a digital asset

Think in three piles. They are treated differently.

Sentimental and personal Email, texts, iCloud or Google Photos, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, notes, and cloud backups. Little cash value. High emotional value. Often the first thing a family wants.

Financial and transferable Online banking, Wealthsimple or Questrade, PayPal, Interac, crypto on an exchange or in a hardware wallet, domain names, an Etsy or Shopify shop, a monetized YouTube channel, unused Air Miles or PC Optimum points.

Licences that usually die with you Spotify, Netflix, Kindle and Apple Books libraries, Steam games, and many software subscriptions. You often cannot “leave” the library. You can usually cancel the billing.

Ontario treats digital property much like other property. The hard part is not ownership. It is access.

The legal gap in Ontario

This is the point most articles get wrong.

Ontario does not yet have a statute that clearly forces Google, Apple, Meta, or a crypto exchange to hand an account to an estate trustee. The Ontario Bar Association has asked the province to adopt the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s Uniform Access to Digital Assets by Fiduciaries Act. Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Yukon have versions of that law. As of 2026, Ontario has not.

What you do have:

• A will and, where needed, a Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee from the Superior Court of Justice. That certificate is the court’s confirmation that the estate trustee may deal with the estate.
• General trustee powers under Ontario estate law.
• Each platform’s own terms of service.
• Federal privacy rules, including PIPEDA, which companies often cite when they refuse to open an inbox.

A will clause that authorizes the estate trustee to deal with digital assets helps. It does not guarantee that Apple or Facebook will cooperate. Some companies accept a death certificate plus the court certificate. Others ask for a further, specially worded court order. That adds months and legal fees.

Logging in with a password you found in a drawer can also breach the platform’s terms. Do not treat “we know the password” as a complete plan.

Set these three tools up while you are alive

Do this before anything else. They work even if Ontario’s statute never arrives.

Google — Inactive Account Manager
myaccount.google.com. Choose how long the account can sit unused (often 3 to 18 months), name up to 10 trusted people, and pick which data each person receives: Gmail, Photos, Drive, YouTube. You can also tell Google to delete the account after that.

Apple — Legacy Contact
On iPhone: Settings → [your name] → Sign-In & Security → Legacy Contact. Apple gives you an access key. Store a printed copy with your estate papers. After death, the contact submits the key and a death certificate at Apple’s digital-legacy site. They get time-limited access to photos, messages, files, and backups — not the Apple ID password itself.

Facebook / Instagram — memorialization settings
In Facebook: Settings → Memorialization. Name a legacy contact, or choose delete-after-death. A legacy contact cannot read private messages. Anyone with proof of death can usually ask Meta to memorialize a profile (“Remembering”) or delete it.

Also check LinkedIn and X. Those platforms generally need a family member or estate trustee to request removal or memorialization after the fact.

Do not put passwords in your will

When an estate trustee applies for a Certificate of Appointment, the will is filed with the court. People with a legitimate interest can read it. Usernames, passwords, and crypto seed phrases do not belong there.

Put authority in the will. Put credentials somewhere else.

A workable split:

1. In the will: define digital assets broadly; give the estate trustee power to access, manage, download, transfer, memorialize, or delete them, subject to applicable law and each platform’s rules; say where the private inventory is kept (not the contents).
2. In a private inventory (a “digital asset memorandum”): account list, usernames, where the password manager lives, 2FA device location, hardware-wallet location, and wishes for each category (keep photos, close the shop, memorialize Facebook). Update it when you change apps. You do not need a lawyer every time you update this list.
3. In a password manager: 1Password, Bitwarden, or similar, with an emergency-access or beneficiary feature. Tell your estate trustee how to get in — a sealed letter in a fireproof box, or the manager’s own emergency protocol.
4. For incapacity, not only death: your Continuing Power of Attorney for Property should also mention digital assets. Banks and cloud accounts lock people out after a stroke as often as after a death.

Ontario still expects a valid will on paper, signed with witnesses. An app printout or an email that says “if I die, my brother gets the Bitcoin” is not a reliable substitute, even though courts now have limited power under section 21.1 of the Succession Law Reform Act to validate imperfect documents.

Cryptocurrency needs its own plan

Crypto is the asset that disappears.

If the coins sit on Wealthsimple Crypto, Coinbase, or another exchange, the platform is a gatekeeper. The estate trustee will usually need a death certificate and often a Certificate of Appointment before the exchange releases anything. Those holdings typically belong in the main (probate) will.

If the coins sit in a hardware wallet or a self-custody app, there is no help desk. No court order can reconstruct a lost seed phrase. Wrong PIN attempts can wipe the device. If the key is gone, the asset is gone.

Two tax points families miss:

• The CRA can still treat crypto as disposed of at fair market value on death (with a spousal-rollover exception). The estate may owe tax on coins nobody can open.
• Ontario Estate Administration Tax is roughly 1.5% of probate assets over $50,000. Self-custodied crypto that the trustee can access without a third party is sometimes placed in a secondary will so it does not go through probate. That is a lawyer-drafted structure, not a DIY trick. Exchange-held crypto usually cannot use that route.

Write down, privately: which coins, which wallet or exchange, where the device is, and how the estate trustee gets the seed phrase. Then test that a trusted person can follow the instructions.

A checklist for Ontario estate trustees

Work through this in the first weeks. You do not need every item on day one.

1. Secure the devices. Collect phones, laptops, tablets, and hardware wallets. Do not factory-reset anything. A locked phone may be the only 2FA device.
2. Get the paper. Death certificates (order several), the will, and, if institutions demand it, start the application for a Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee.
3. Find the inventory. Look for a password manager, a labelled USB stick, a fireproof box, or a note with the lawyer. Check browser password lists only as a last lead, not as a method of “just logging in.”
4. Stop the billing. Cancel Netflix, gym apps, cloud storage upgrades, and domain auto-renewals. Subscriptions keep charging.
5. Notify banks and investment platforms first. Those processes are clearer than social media. Ask what they will accept before probate.
6. Use official death processes for Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and the exchanges. Have PDFs of the death certificate and your appointment documents ready.
7. Download photos and files early if you have lawful access. Some accounts freeze or delete after a period of inactivity.
8. Watch for fraud. Identity theft spikes after a death. Place alerts with Equifax and TransUnion Canada. Do not post funeral details that include the home address and the fact the house is empty.
9. Value what has value. Crypto, domains, online shops, and unused gift-card balances belong on the estate inventory. Report them properly.
10. Call a lawyer if a platform refuses a valid Certificate of Appointment, or if a wallet is locked and the holding is large. An Alberta court in Wada Estate (2026) pushed back on a tech company that demanded a second, redundant order. That case is not binding in Ontario, but the problem is the same.

Common mistakes

• Assuming “family can just log in.” Two-factor authentication and biometric locks stop that.
• Putting the seed phrase in the will.
• Naming an estate trustee who cannot use a password manager, then leaving them a hardware wallet with no instructions.
• Forgetting the phone that receives SMS codes.
• Leaving an online business running with no one to pay suppliers or collect receivables.
• Waiting two years. Google can delete an inactive account. Photos go with it.

What “done” looks like

A solid Ontario plan is not a 40-page tech manual. It is:

• a will that names an estate trustee and gives digital-asset authority
• a Power of Attorney for Property that does the same during incapacity
• legacy contacts set on Google, Apple, and Facebook
• a private, updated account list
• a password manager your trustee can open
• written crypto instructions, if you hold any
• a conversation with the person who will have to do this

Your digital life is part of your estate, whether Ontario’s legislature catches up or not. A few hours of setup now is cheaper than a court application, and kinder than leaving a spouse or child locked out of twenty years of photos.

If you are already the estate trustee and you cannot get into an account, start with the death certificate, the will, and the platform’s published after-death form. Then decide whether the contents are worth a lawyer’s letter.